who we are and all that we're trying to be
A small gathering of family, a weight of finality, and the crushing ache in his lungs simply started fresh and anew. Blow upon blow, sear upon sear, and every lifetime he’d suffered through continued to measure up to these moments. Were he a soul capable of rising from catacombs so easily, he might’ve recalled and remembered days beneath mountains, of tents painted and draped in vibrant hues, of worlds upon worlds conquered and divulged. Instead, the inward scars gnarled and loomed larger than before – a devastating laceration along the columns and vessels of his blackened heart, and he wondered why he’d ever bothered striving for anything beyond numbness. Wouldn’t he be better off, to drown, to live in the soulless darkness, to only thrive with a scythe in hand, than to ever experience this misery again and again and again?
Deimos gathered more sticks, more brush, more broken brambles that wouldn’t escape the pending fire’s clutches, and when Bastien was done, he stepped forward, placed them down along the rest of the pyre’s adornments.
And finally took a look at his fallen friend, beneath blankets, so the sun couldn’t scorch what remained.
He hadn’t, not once since her demise, truly stared at her still, prone form. The Sword wanted to preserve memories, of a laughing Rexanna, teasing and mocking him for something ridiculous, of a Thief donned in her all-knowing snicker and smirk, of a newly recruited, golden thing pretending to bow to a frozen King. Not this – pale and lifeless, unmoving, no gilded accoutrements, no barbed tongue, no wily convictions.
She would haunt him, as another beloved he couldn’t save.
The Sword went to his knees before her altar, head bowed, eyes closed; the scorching ghosts catching him alight and letting him burn in the thick of sorrow. No tears were shed, no voice given, save for the silent convictions, restless in the back of his throat. They pulsed and pushed outward, and he wished she might be able to hear, from somewhere in realms he couldn’t touch. I am sorry. It was not supposed to be this way. He couldn’t beg her forgiveness, couldn’t plead for her absolution, but still it pressed and seared along his mind. I am proud of you, for everything you have ever accomplished. For your wit. For your cunning. I just wish you were still here. His jaw clenched, and he finally rose, hands unfurling tiny pins – one a sun eclipsed, another a mountainside, tucking them into the blanket.
One last hushed reverberation loomed, and then he backed away. We will see one another again. I will make sure of it.
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
